Dr. Zafiris J. Daskalakis

Professor

Contact Information

Profile

Dr. Zafiris J. Daskalakis is Professor of Psychiatry and Temerty Chair in Therapeutic Brain Intervention and Chief of the Mood and Anxiety Division at CAMH.

Dr. Zafiris J. Daskalakis was born and raised in Toronto. He initially started his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto and completed medical school at Queen’s University in 1994. He subsequently entered the residency training in Psychiatry at the University of Toronto which he= completed in 1999. While still a resident, Dr. Daskalakis began graduate studies in the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto, supervised by Drs. Shitij Kapur (Imaging/Psychiatry) and Robert Chen (Neurophysiology). He completed fellowship training and his PhD in 2002 at which point he started as an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto. Dr. Daskalakis was promoted to rank of Professor of Psychiatry in 2013 and he is co-director of the Temerty Centre for Therapeutic Brain Intervention and Chief of Mood and Anxiety at CAMH.

Research Interests

With an expertise in the neurophysiology and treatment of severe psychiatric disorders, the Temerty Centre uses magnetic brain stimulation to study the role of cortical inhibition and plasticity as potential pathophysiological mechanisms in schizophrenia, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. Dr. Daskalakis also conducts treatment studies using repetitive transcranial magnetic brain stimulation (rTMS) and magnetic seizure therapy (MST) for refractory symptoms in these disorders. He has been a NARSAD Lieber Young Investigator (2004, 2006) a NARSAD Independent Investigator (2008) and holds or has held CIHR, OMHF and Brain Canada operating awards. He has also been awarded the Samarthji Lal Award in Mental Health Research from the Graham Boeckh Foundation for the top mid-career neuropsychopharmacology researcher in Canada in 2013. Finally, he has over 250 peer-reviewed publications, books and book chapters in prestigious journals such as the Archives of General Psychiatry, JAMA Psychiatry Brain and the American Journal of Psychiatry and is an editorial board member for Biological Psychiatry and an Associate Editor for Clinical Neurophysiology.